Dolby Announces Beta For Chat Room Environment: Axon!

Dolby Laboratories, Inc. has announced
a limited beta release of its new Dolby(R) Axon desktop client software that
brings surround sound voice technology to a chat room environment. Both in
game and out, the software will enable gamers to naturally discern who is
talking by the direction of his or her voice.

Because the software is based on
the Dolby Axon 3D voice technology, users will be able to hear voice chat in
surround sound--minimizing the sensation that all voices seem to come from
the same location. The new software is well-suited for chat room features in
online multiplayer games, and has an easy-to-use graphical interface that
allows users to create, join, and interact in visual chat rooms.

"Dolby understands that people hear
the world in surround sound, so it makes sense that we would enable this for
an online world as well," said Matt Tullis, Senior Marketing Manager for
Games at Dolby Laboratories. "Whether it's in online chat rooms or during
actual game play, the ability to discern each other's voices spatially
translates into a much more enjoyable experience."

As hardcore gamers ourselves, we
were anxious to get our hands on this new product. We’ve given it the full
run through and have listed our favorite features below. However we strongly
encourage you to go and try it yourself!

Surround Sound Chatting:
With Dolby Axon you can always tell who's talking because the voice quality
is incredibly clear and members of the chat can place themselves in certain
locations so the sounds, location, and tone of their voice remain constant.
This makes it easy to identify who's saying what, and who's screaming for
that heal!

Large Chat Rooms: You can
invite up to 50 people and see them visually represented in the chat room.
The sound stays clear even with that many people and the surround sound
plays a big part in letting you know who's saying what, so that you can
actually identify voices and it's obvious who that person is despite the
larger number of people in the chat room. Group Division: You
can set up sub-rooms inside the main chat room, so if you're having a guild
officer meeting, while some members are crafting and others are raiding,
everyone in the guild can break off into different rooms inside the same
area. This also makes it incredibly simple, and requires very little effort,
to get everyone together and on the same page when you need to quickly
mobilize your guild to defend or attack.

Low-Bandwidth and High quality:
The bandwidth usage for Dolby Axon is extremely low, and the quality is
better than you'd likely hear on a landline phone. Using Dolby Axon, nothing
is lost and you gain an excellent competitive advantage!

Well ive signed up for beta, im pretty keen too try it......I Just want to see how its going to work on the server side of things. If they will be hosted for free by them, or player hosted...Or like vent is....

I'm not looking forward to this. It would be pretty annoying to try and communicate with a friend who isn't nearby you in the game, or coordinate a larger-scale assault of some kind (raids & bgs in wow for example).

I could see it being cool in some games though, but the inconvenience would probably make it more of a novelty than anything.

I wrote them to ask if they had plans for a Mac client. Got some jumbled up auto-reply about it being available for Xp and Vista. hehe Asked if that was helpful... so replied it wasn't and said I didn't think they even read my question. Received a note that my ticket was closed and filed to suggestions. I think they have a hard time with reading comprehension.

It would add a new level of communication to games such as Battlefield, where you can currently only communicate to your squad with voice, this way you could talk to people near you / the enemy. I see valve doing something cool with this.